Too Wicked to Marry (21 page)

"Nicer." He chuckled again, and somehow managed to pull her even closer. "You're crushing my bustle."

"I won't tell Mrs. Swift if you won't."

"A wise man, as well as a nice one."

"You know very well I am not nice." His hands smoothed over her waist and across her breasts. The faint touch set her senses humming. "You're trying to flatter me into taking you for a long walk in the garden," he informed her.

She leaned her head back against his chest. She was quite comfortable right there. "Am I?"

"Yes. It's a very romantic garden."

"I can see that from here."

"But you can't experience life at a distance, my dear. Or moonlit gardens."

He was annoyingly correct that she spent most of her time observing rather than living life. It went with the profession, but she was not feeling very professional at the moment. She wanted to go down into the dark garden with Martin and do what the other couples there were doing. Perhaps lie on a bed of roses, and—

"I wonder what's going on in that small wood over there?" she asked, pointing toward the lights in the distance.

Martin slipped his arms from around her and took her hand. White teeth gleamed in the moonlight as he smiled at her. "Let's find out."

She descended the marble steps to the gardens as quickly and eagerly as a curious child. Maybe it was the moonlight. Maybe it was the company. Maybe it was the clasp of his fingers, so sure and strong entwined with hers. Whatever it was, Harriet felt light as thistledown, and as floaty. Because it was dark, and the gardens of Strake House came as close to being a fairyland as Harriet had ever seen, she let herself believe this closeness she and Martin shared was real—at least out there in the rose-scented moonlight.

Past the rearing bronzes of the fountain, beyond the darkly beckoning entrance to the boxwood maze, they stopped to kiss in the shadow of a white marble statue. Their lips clung, their hands clung, and their bodies strained to be so close together that Harriet felt for an instant of rushing passion that they'd become one. It was so intense that her soul begged for her to somehow make it real, make it never end, to love Martin forever and never lose him. But that could never be…

Martin didn't know why Harriet cried out and whirled away from him to the other side of the statue, leaving his arms empty and his senses in turmoil. He shook his head and tried to clear his mind before he followed after her.

At first he thought she'd run off, then he saw that she'd stepped back into the shadows and was looking up at the marble creature on the plinth.

He couldn't help but smile when he followed her gaze. "I'm afraid most men's private parts can't compare with mythological proportions such as that."

"And a good thing," she answered. "What would one use it for, a coat rack?"

"Shall we find out?" he asked, and stripped off his jacket. Harriet put her hand over her mouth and laughed when he hung the coat up on the protruding part of the marble faun.

"Where does one find something like that? Did the Hellfire Club hold a jumble sale?" she asked.

A nice girl would not know about the last century's most infamous gentlemen's club, and Harriet would not be trying to divert him like this unless something was disturbing her. Hadn't she liked being kissed? She'd certainly seemed to be enjoying it as much as he was, before she broke away. Perhaps she'd been enjoying it too much. Or perhaps she was regretting having given herself to him. He didn't know, and wasn't sure he wanted to ask. Perhaps nothing was wrong at all, and her mind was more on business than on lovemaking. That was too bad, because she'd had hours to look for her blasted courier. Now it was time for her to concentrate on fulfilling her part of the bargain. To concentrate on pleasing him.

But none of the tangled logic twisted up with lust changed the fact that he instinctively knew she was upset, and just as instinctively longed to comfort her. Then again, there was no reason a man could not comfort a woman in a lusty, amorous fashion, was there?

"Why don't we go back to the house?" he suggested.

Harriet backed away from him and turned once more toward the lights in the distance. "Soon," she answered. She pointed. "See the white limestone path shining in the moonlight?"

"It's impossible to miss in the moonlight," he answered.

"Can you hear the music coming from the woods?"

He could indeed hear the faint strains of melody played on pipes and a stringed instrument. There was a wildness to the sounds he disliked. He glanced suspiciously at the now-covered rampant faun. He suspected they might not want to join the entertainment taking place in the woods. "Perhaps," he began, but Harriet hurried off up the shining path before he could finish.
A babe into the haunted woods
, he thought with a sigh, and snatched down his coat and followed protectively after her.

Harriet did not know what she was running from or to, for she wasn't thinking clearly. And she hated it, hated it with a passion almost as great as her passion for Martin Kestrel. She liked order. She liked being in control. She liked being a calm, calculating chess master and not the witless pawn of desperate events and her own emotions.

"This is no way to run a rescue," she murmured to herself as she made her way toward music and firelight and a crowd of people, to insulate her from her reactions to Martin.

"What did you say, my dear?" Martin asked, closer behind her than she thought. She almost gave in to the impulse to pick up her skirts and run like she had the devil on her heels. "It was only one kiss, my love," he added when she said nothing. His hand landed on her shoulder, though he didn't try to hold her back. "Are you afraid you liked it too much?"

Stop being right all the time
! she thought, but held her tongue on the words. "Just around here," she said as they reached a point where the path curved around a huge ancient oak tree.

When she first stepped around the tree, her gaze was drawn immediately to a giant bonfire that blazed in the center of the clearing. It was so bright she had to blink a few times to adjust her eyes, and even when she did she could not fathom for a few moments what she was seeing. When the scene did come into focus, she was assaulted with detail that overwhelmed comprehension.

Naked bodies with masked faces writhed in the firelight, dancing not to the music of the blindfolded musicians, but to a more primal rhythm. Fornicating bodies were everywhere. She saw not only couples, but also combinations of three and four people forming frantic patterns of flesh twined with flesh. There were heaving bodies on the ground, draped over boulders, backed up against trees, kneeling before the fire. Groups broke and reformed in quick, mindless succession. Flushed skin, mouths sucking breasts and penises, grasping hands everywhere, pumping organs, jiggling breasts, and buttocks filled her sight.

"Oh, God," she gasped, her stomach twisting in revulsion. "Oh, God!"

She whirled, and ran straight into Martin. "Don't fret," he said. "
Let's—oof
."

Harriet shoved hysterically into him, pushing him off the path. She needed to run, and woe betide anyone or thing that got in her way.

Martin spun around as his shoulder hit a tree. Harriet was already far down the path, racing headlong the way they'd come. He cursed and continued swearing as he ran after her. He cursed the disgusting exhibition in the clearing. He cursed ever having allowed her to see such a sick spectacle. He cursed himself roundly for a fool who thought that just because she could joke about a lewd statue, that she would not be deeply affected by the sight of a full-out orgy when she came upon it. He truly had not suspected any garnering in the clearing would be for such vile purposes. There were couples sharing dalliances all around the shadowed gardens; how could he have known the worst of it was being performed around a cheery fire to the accompaniment of music?

He didn't catch up with her until she reached their bedroom, and even then she slammed the door and the key was turning in the lock when he set his shoulder to the wood and forced his way inside. Once in the room, Martin slammed and locked the door himself.

He heard Harriet sobbing before he saw her, and moved quickly to where she was kneeling on the far side of the bed. Her face was pressed into the blue satin bedcover, and her sable-brown hair had fallen down around her bare shoulders, which shook with her weeping. She was the most utterly forlorn thing he had ever seen. When Martin knelt beside her he was almost afraid to touch her at first, though he leaned closer when she sobbed out a word against the thick hanging bedcover.

"What, my love?" he asked gently. "What did you say?"

She did not turn her head, but her voice was stronger when she spoke again. "Vile." She pounded a fist against the side of the bed. "Disgusting. Ugly. Degenerate. Vile. I didn't know." She struck the mattress again and again. "I've seen pictures… and the statues… and last night was… but this, this…" She bunched up cloth in her fists. "I didn't know!"

He kept his voice as soft and gentle as he could manage. "Know what, my sweet?"

"Aunt Phoebe never said it was so… so… awful! I can't do that." She turned her head and he saw the wild terror that filled her eyes. "I won't do that!" she declared. "Not even for you! Not even for—"

Martin took her face in his hands, and wouldn't let her go when she tried to shake him off. "You never get hysterical." He spoke quietly, firmly, and he refused to let her look away from him. "You would hate to let anything disturb you so much that you ran from it. Because if you ran from something, you would think it necessary to face it down until you were no longer disturbed by it. But some things do not bear facing. Some things are not worth facing. So you are not hysterical, nor are you disturbed by that distasteful, silly display of flailing body parts out in the garden. People who behave like that are beneath your notice. You do not suffer fools, and those are the worst sort of fools—desperately unhappy, empty people who know nothing about love."

She blinked, tears clinging to her long, thick lashes. His words seemed to have calmed her somewhat. She sniffled. "They know about sex."

He shook his head. "That was not sex, my sweet."

"It looked like—"

He kissed a tear from her cheek, and she stiffened at even this slight brush of his lips on her skin. "It looked like what it was; anonymous and deluded and dirty. Forgive me for letting you witness such a thing." She looked confused and vulnerable, but she was getting back some of the control she so valued.

"Forgive you?" She sounded so very bitter. "Did you know?"

"I had a suspicion, but—"

Suddenly a ripple of shock went through her and she pulled away. She was on her feet when she demanded, "Did you expect me to join in that disgusting display of—"

"How dare you?" he demanded in return, on his feet as well now. "I wanted you as a mistress, not as a whore!"

"Is there a difference?"

He had not thought so, a day or two ago, when he'd made this monstrous bargain with someone he thought was a woman of the world. And she'd lived up to the bargain, even when it turned out she was—once again—not the person she seemed to be at all. She must hate him for this. Perhaps she had always hated him; how was he to know?

He could point out that she was the one who had asked to come there, that she was the one who had proposed posing as his mistress. Of course, then she could throw back in his face that he was the one who insisted she actually
become
his mistress. She had agreed to pay a high price, but perhaps she now feared it might be too high a price to bear.

"It is not me you are angry with," he said. "It is yourself. It is not the fools at the orgy that repulsed you, but your own conscience acting up that sent you running."

"Stop being reasonable with me," she demanded. "Stop it right now. You only want your own way; we both know that."

He was shocked. "What are you talking about?"

She pointed toward the bed. "You know."

"Ah," he said, and showed deep dimples when he smiled. "I see. You're afraid you'll like it too much when I make love to you again. My dearest, you can never like making love with me too much."

Harriet knew full well the man could talk the birds out of the trees and have them eating out of his hand. She'd heard him spin sugar webs of reason and logic around some of the shrewdest and most clear-headed men in Europe and get his way every time. She was furious to have his skills turned on her.

"I could never enjoy making love to anyone after seeing the ugly truth of what lust is," she told him. "Don't try to make me think I can."

She saw the gleam of challenge come into his eyes and knew immediately that she had said the wrong thing.

"All right," he answered, stalking closer. "I won't make you think anything." His arms surrounded her the instant she tried to turn away. He pulled her closer, pressing her body close to his. Just before his mouth covered hers, he finished confidently, "You won't have to think. I'll do the thinking for you, and you will
know
."